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Newer News: March 2014

February 2014 Intelligence News

• Spy Chief James Clapper: We Can't Stop Another Snowden by Eli Lake, The Daily Beast, February 23. "President Obama's Director of National Intelligence spent his life protecting secrets. Then came the biggest leak of all."
• Live and Let Leak: State Secrets in the Snowden Era by Jack Shafer, Foreign Affairs, March/April. "The lesson of Snowden, a lesson Sagar points to but refuses to embrace, is that the United States' muddled system of leaks by lawbreakers to the press is an irreplaceable last resort."
• NSA Notice to Congress on Resignation of NSA Employee, February 10. "This is to update the Committee on steps that the National Security Agency (NSA) has taken to assign accountability related to the unauthorized disclosures of classified information by former contractor Edward Snowden." (via MSNBC)
• Rand Paul files lawsuit against NSA, President Obama over phone surveillance by James R. Carroll, The Courier-Journal, February 12. "Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and a libertarian group Wednesday asked a federal court to halt the National Security Agency's collection of telephone data and to purge what already has been stored since 2006."
• FISA Court Granting Govt Motion to Amend, released in redacted form, February 12.
• Govt Motion to Amend FISA Court Primary Order of January 3, 2014, released in redacted form, February 12.
• FISA Court Primary Order of January 3, 2014, released in redacted form, February 12.
• Why Teaching How to Beat Polygraphs Can Land You in Jail by Joshua Swain, Reason, February 11. "Last September, Chad Dixon was sentenced to 8 months in a federal prison for teaching clients counter-measures for polygraph tests. Federal prosecutors charged Dixon with obstructing justice--they view his business as undermining an important tool used to check the credibility of government employees and prosecute criminals."
• Americans find swift stonewall on whether NSA vacuumed their data by Marisa Taylor and Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy Newspapers, February 11. "Since last year's revelations about the National Security Agency's massive communications data dragnets, the spy agency has been inundated with requests from Americans and others wanting to know if it has files on them. All of them are being turned down."
• List of Permissible Uses of Signals Intelligence Collected in Bulk, ODNI release, February 10. "I am hereby releasing the current list of permissible uses of nonpublicly available signals intelligence that the United States collects in bulk."
• Ex-State Dept. adviser pleads guilty in leak to Fox News by Ann Marimow, Washington Post, February 7. "Stephen Jin-Woo Kim admitted sharing information from a top-secret intelligence report on North Korea with Fox chief Washington correspondent James Rosen."
• Statement of Defense Attorney Abbe Lowell on Stephen Kim Guilty Plea, February 7. "On June 11, 2009, Stephen Kim did what so many government officials do every day in Washington, DC: he talked to a reporter. Regrettably, the topic and some of the information that he discussed with a reporter was also contained in a classified report."
• CIA confirms agency obliged to follow federal surveillance law by Spencer Ackerman, The Guardian, February 7. "But neither the agency nor its Senate overseers will say what, if any, current, recent or desired activities the law prohibits the CIA from performing -- particularly since a section of the law explicitly carves out an exception for 'lawfully authorized' intelligence activities."
• Seattle judge will join super-secret spy court by Michael Doyle, McClatchy News, February 7. "Judge Richard C. Tallman's new appointment to the three-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review potentially gives him oversight of highly sensitive national security matters that may never see the light of day."
• Two Judges Appointed to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, news release, February 7. "Chief Justice Roberts has designated Richard C. Tallman as a Judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review for a term commencing January 27, 2014 and ending January 26, 2021."
• FISC Approves Government's Request to Modify Telephony Metadata Program, ODNI news release, February 6. "The Department of Justice filed a motion with the FISC to amend its most recent Jan. 3, 2014, primary order approving the production of telephony metadata collection under Section 215. Yesterday, the FISC granted the government's motion."
• NSA nominee unknown to privacy advocates by Julian Hattem, The Hill, February 1. "The president's nominee to take over the helm of the National Security Agency (NSA) is mostly a stranger to privacy and civil liberties advocates."